


thomas is a boy

by DerVierteStern (frivillig_soldat)



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2465243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frivillig_soldat/pseuds/DerVierteStern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or at least, Miro thinks so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thomas is a boy

Thomas is a boy. That’s the first thing Klose thinks upon first seeing him as a confirmed member of the team.

 

He’s a very talented boy, Miro knows that even then, although he doesn’t acknowledge it as much as his many years of seeing talent flare and dim out on the pitch maybe should have, because they were all talented to be in Bayern Munich’s first team and whilst that might have impressed the lot from second, it didn’t Klose. He notices more his manner, open and laughing and carefree in the way only fresh-faced footballers who have only just hit their twenties with careers that have barely just taken root are. He also notices how he immediately strikes up easy conversation with Schweinsteiger and Podolski – the terror duo – in the middle of the loose crowd that has formed around him, and the way one sharp elbow comes a goalkeeper’s reflex away from knocking over Rensing’s beer.

 

When he makes his way over to say his own greetings – he’s the veteran here, people look up to him to do this kind of thing, not that he minds – he’s unprepared for Thomas’ grin that splits his face into good nature and teeth, and his call that ah, so this must be the legendary _Opa_ at last, hello, with surprising familiarity. He’s slightly thrown – he’s always been one of the more reserved ones – but he says his welcome, and slips into the banter.

 

Thomas, he thinks, when they finally peel themselves from the bar/couches/rugs to meander their tipsy way home, is a nice boy.

 

\--

 

Thomas, it turns out, is nothing like the Thomas off-pitch who comes barefoot out of the shower and consequently skids an impressive half-length of the changing room, mowing down everyone unfortunate enough to be in his path (and what’s even more impressive is that he’s done it _twice_ ), when he has a ball at his feet. It doesn’t take 2010 for him to recognise that.

 

He’s still impressed, though, at his first goal in South Africa and the third against Australia, all deceptively flailing limbs and twisting spine and devastating precision. He’s the first to reach Müller, and the first to hug him in congratulations. Müller returns his high-five, and his hug, and he’s impressed again by the way the kid takes it all in his stride.

 

Then Podolski catches up with them, and Khedira and Mertesacker and Özil and Lahm and the next four goals, and Thomas laughs wild and gleeful as the rest.

 

He’s earned his wings, and some day they’ll watch him soar.

 

\--

 

Thomas and Gómez hit off pretty much as soon as they see each other, and they all know that a match to rival the infamous Schweinski has been made; Miro himself – and the other 99% of the team too, he’s certain, that included poor unsuspecting Jupp and left the actual terror duo to make up the probably disappointed 1% – is infinitely glad of the close miss, made only possible by Gómez’s constant…

 

…posturing. That’s the only word Miro can think of to adequately describe the way Gómez always walks on the other side of Thomas.

 

(He also thinks it comical, just how many ways Gómez can find to drape himself over a sofa or a bar. He wisely does not think this aloud.

 

Not that his tact makes much of a difference, with Schweinski around. A very loud Schweinski.

 

Gómez laughs, lower and far less hysterical, along with them.)

 

\--

 

No, what he meant to say was that Gómez, for all the amusement in the blue of his eyes, the lift of his jaw, the too-effortless stretch of his limbs and the (damnable) half-smile that often played around his mouth that Miro could never quite understand (or, mild-mannered as he is, stand), won by them more friends than he might have adversities, or

 

people like Miro, who only ever meant to say that

 

 _Gómez, Mario, was a nice boy._ They all are, and Miro thinks it unreasonable of himself to take such uncharacteristic dislike to someone who always shares only pleasantries with others – even if the humour hidden behind smiling teeth stays rather less shared. Gómez’s behaviour was understandable, even if not entirely necessary, and it certainly wasn’t Miro’s place to take personal offence against others’ habits.

 

(He is only repentant so long until Thomas fools too comical, though, next to Gómez who chuckles quiet encouragement down into his ear, and smiles selfish smiles back to Thomas.)

 

\--

 

Here is how Miro sees it: the most decent thing he can do is to try and be the best person he can to the people around him, and he’s tried to live to that ever since the time he called the Weserstadion _‘home’._

 

Here is how Miro also sees it: Thomas is painfully young, young enough to look utterly crushed after each failure, seeking unabashed refuge in Gómez arms, the front of Gómez’s jersey, the crook of Gómez’s neck, right there in the locker room until there’s nothing to be seen of him but the back of his curly head, Gómez running his hands up and down his back in patient soothing. But he’s also young enough that dogged determination alone can reel him back to the training grounds at hours when the sun is still bleary-eyed with dawn, to snap goal after goal to the back of the net. He improves; laughs again.

 

Or Gómez takes him home, a gentle hand low on his hip; by training the following morning, the effect is the same.

 

Sometimes Miro has to admit that Thomas is old enough to learn.

 

\--

 

(But when he frowns, imperceptible, and subtly turns to pair up with Olić for their stretches instead of Gómez when he sees him starting to make his way over; when he smiles tighter-lipped than he intends to at some joke of Gomèz’s, some clever twist of that lightly smirking mouth, that sends everyone else roaring with hilarity; when he snubs Gómez unnecessarily in a thousand and one little ways that the other never challenges him on, he cannot admit that it is because he is jealous.)

 

\--

 

(Yet.)

 

\--

 

In hindsight, he wouldn’t know how he could have expected things to continue the way they, well, _didn’t_ , because one training Tuesday in the pleasant city of Turin, the morning air sharp with early December chill, Gómez turns around and grits out at him, _what’s your fucking problem._

 

Except it doesn’t quite happen like that, and Miro’s surprised that it hadn’t, much earlier, before they’d flown in to Italy, the Champions League, the DFB-Pokal, even, and he’s surprised again that it has at all.

 

Miro is standing off to the side of the pitch, a paper cup of hot water cradled carefully in his hands. Steam from it wisps up into the air in white wreaths that remind him of October fog over dark asphalt roads, and days to the beach, the light grey drizzle of rain and sea foam.

 

He’s thinking of gritty sand in the lines of sea shells, brown and white and mostly broken, when the ball rolls to a smart stop a few millimeters away from his right foot. He looks up, half-formed musings scattering like flotsam at the break of a wave, loses them immediately to the wash of surprise.

 

“Mario,” he asks, because the ball was nothing if not deliberate, and even if he hadn’t realised that by now, the image of Gómez striding towards him would be indication enough.

 

 _“What’s your fucking problem,”_ Gómez doesn’t say.

 

“You have time for a drink this evening?” Gómez does say, with a tilt of his head and the hint of a smile like a secret between the two of them.

 

Miro frowns at him: Gómez knows full well that they’re up against Juventus tomorrow, and there is a good reason Jogi would rip them to international-footballer-coloured shreds if he caught them at something so irresponsible, which he’s in no doubt that Gómez also knows.

 

They stand there like that for a while, Miro frowning and keeping a silence slightly uneasy with guilt and not-understanding, and Gómez looking at him, eyes shadowed dark and inscrutable. Gómez is the one to break the silence.

 

“I do mean it, you know,” he says, sweeping the ball from at Miro’s feet to arc back onto the pitch, and turning seamlessly to follow. Miro suspects, knows, it’s not just the drinks he’s talking about.

 

 Gómez pauses briefly a few paces away, half-glances at him from over his shoulder.

 

 _“Take good care of him,”_ he says, and breaks into a dribble to rejoin the others.

 

(It occurs to Miro, just as he’s screwing the cap of the hotel toothpaste back on to use tomorrow morning, that Gómez and he might have been good friends.)

 

\--                                                                                                                          

 

They do well; Mario does well; Miro tells him as much when he congratulates him with a glass of beer tipped in his direction and a smile as good as any apology.

 

Mario smiles back at him from where he stands halfway across the room, an arm draped loosely around Thomas’ shoulders, mocking and genuine as his smiles always are, and raises his own glass back in acknowledgement. A second later and he’s laughing, slopping beer over his hands as he toasts some ridiculous comment of Badstuber’s.

 

\--

 

Things are better after that.

 

They go on to lose in the final against Internazionale, which certainly could be better, but aside from that Miro is that much the happier for allowing his gaze to linger on Thomas in the coach, fresh out of the shower, on the pitch, and as much as he can pull off off the pitch. And that’s enough to content him, for a while.

 

(For a while.)

 

\--

 

But still, left to him alone, Miroslav might never have touched him. He has children, after all, and nowhere else in the world would he be able to find two such beautiful little boys who come running to the door in identical slippers when he comes home, and clamor _daddy, daddy_ in voices of sweet innocence. And Thomas – Thomas has a girlfriend, too, pretty as his own Sylwia and younger, and completely undeserving of the wrong Miro would do her by tempting Thomas away. Responsibility would have weighed down heavy as guilt at his insides, holding leaden his hands and his tongue until Thomas got over his disappointment and moved on, as he would, because young hearts mend just as easily as they are broken, even if the pieces don’t quite smooth out into the whole they once were. And if Miro was left with little chinks of longing that stung like cold air past broken teeth, that would be his fault entirely.

 

Lucky for them both that such thing as Thomas existed, then. And Thomas might deliberate, too, might chew over his doubts enough to keep rare silence, but in the end Thomas is one for action.

 

So Miro doesn’t quite know whether to be surprised or not when he pushes open the door of his hotel room, elation still curving a slight smile onto his lips even though he knows that Australia was just the beginning of a difficult and hopefully long campaign, to find Thomas already draped comfortable and utterly at ease across his bed. He sits up when Miro enters; Miro can almost feel the tight adrenaline from the lines of his muscles, though when he looks at Miro, his gaze is steady and true enough that Miro, for all his two years of doubts, feels that there’s nothing more he wants in that moment than to fall to his knees into it. He’s barely aware of pushing the door closed behind him with a muted click, and stepping towards his bed, once, twice.

 

Then Thomas grins, slow and sharp and wicked, and with glittering eyes winds his arms around Miro’s waist and pulls him down. And Miro lets him, tumbling down onto the generic white duvet with Thomas’ long legs splayed to either side of his hips, and thinks that he’s underestimated Thomas (and thank God for that.)


End file.
